brief_history_of_the_worldfandomcom-20200215-history
Greek Foundation of Western Culture
The '''Greek Foundation of Western Culture' lasted from about 776 BC until 371 BC. It began with the receding of the Late Bronze Age Collapse as new civilisations emerged to fill the power vacuum; Classical Greece and her great rival Persia. It then ends with the mutual self-destruction of the city-states in the Peloponnesian War, which allowed for the rise of Macedon and the conquering exploits of Alexander the Great. The role of Ancient Greece was preeminent in the making of the classical Mediterranean world and thus Western civilisaion, so with them its story must begin. The Greek search for excellence defined for later nations what excellence was and their inspirational legacy remains difficult to exaggerate. No such unified states as Ancient Greece ever existed. Instead it was a collection of independent city-states, blatantly competitive with one another. Perhaps some of the explanation of their remarkable achievement lies here. By the 6th-century BC, Greek civilisation had spread through colonisation from Marseilles in the west to Black Sea in the east. It had also passed through a dramatic stage of political upheaval from which appeared the first known democracy. There were in fact a wide range of political systems, from democracies to oligarchies and monarchies, thus Greece could draw upon a rich variety of political experience, providing data for the first systematic reflections upon the great problems of law, duty and obligation. With the rise of Persia of the 6th-century BC, Greek civilisation was confronted with her defining challenge. For all the animosity between the two, Persian civilisation was equally extraordinary: a vast empire, a well organised economy, a relatively tolerant provincial system, as well as other ground-breaking advances in human civilsation. Famous victories in the Greco-Persian Wars at Marathon, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale ushered in the greatest age of Greek history; an effervescence of culture unlike anything that had been seen before. Some have spoken of a "Greek miracle", so high do the achievements of classical civilization appear. They nevertheless had as their background poisonous tensions among the city-states, especially between bitter rivals Athens and Sparta. For decades, Greece was torn by the lethal squabbles of the Peloponnesian War, that ended in the mutual self-destruction of both Athens and Sparta, and ultimately the extinction of the institution which had sheltered Greek civilization; the city-state. The Greek invention of politics now seems like a poison brew. However, in the end the Greeks are remembered as poets and philosophers. It is an achievement of the mind that constitutes their major claim on our attention. Much of the foundations of Western art and architecture, mathematics and scientific thought, theatre and literature, historiography and philosophy, derives from this period of history; not to mention the Olympic Games. They also gifted us our idealisation of democracy, and even our vocabulary for talking about politics. The ideas of these Greek thinkers would be preserved, imitated and spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, and as far as India thanks to the conquering exploits of Alexander the Great. Classical Greece also had a powerful influence on the Romans, through whom their ideas would pass eventually to medieval Europe. Yet even at the end of the 4th-century BC, the Greeks were almost oblivious to this new rising star in the west. History Emergence of Greek City-States The appearance of a new civilisation in Greece owed much to older Aegean traditions. The legacy of Minoan Crete (1900-1500 BC) and the later Mycenaean Greece (1600-1190 BC) is reflected in Greek legends and literature: the Minotaur reflects the importance of the bull in Minoan religious life; and the heroes of Homer's epics occupied Mycenaean palaces. Even the uncivilised marauding Dorian tribesmen, who brought the Mycenaeans to an abrupt end, cannot be entirely dismissed for they brought knowledge of iron technology with them. From about 900 BC, Greece began to emerge from her "Dark Ages". Cities began to reemerge, with Athens at the forefront; she had successfully resisted the Dorians, thus a genuine continuity existed from the Mycenaeans. Each city was said to be protected by a particular god or goddess, for example Athens’ deity was Athena and Corinth's was Poseidon. But there was a central pantheon shared by all. The shrine at Delphi, the sources of respected if enigmatic advice, brought worshippers from all over Greece; it was believed to be the centre of the world. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adppted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. This made possible the recording of the traditional oral poetry, which was said to be the work of the most famous of the Greek poets, Homer. In the Iliad and Odyssey, he perhaps did as much as anyone to crystallise a Greek identity and order the complex Greek pantheon. Greek gods and goddesses, for all their supernatural standing, were remarkably human, presented as taking sides in the Trojan War and helping or hindering Odysseus on his way home. There was a blatant competitiveness in Greek life. Homer’s hero frequently behaves like a rogue, but he is brave and clever and he succeeds. Greeks admired men who won, and feared public shame rather than guilt. Some of the explanation of their remarkable achievements lies here; as does the bitterness of their politics. suppressed them in AD 393 as part of the campaign to impose Christianity.]] 776 BC was an important year in the history of Greek civilisation’s self-consciousness. The people who gathered for the first Olympic Games and later festivals, recognised that they shared a common culture, as well as a language, religion, and myths. Although we now call them Ancient Greeks, they would have called themselves Hellenes, a word first used to distinguish the native inhabitants from the invaders. Yet a common culture was never politically binding. Indeed the independent cities were fiercely competitive, and a unified state was something rarely even contemplated by the Greeks themselves. The geography of Greece always favoured small self-contained city-states, since for the most part, cultivation was confined to very small patches, and overland communication between them was usually difficult. They all tended to look outward across the sea, rather than behind them to their hinterland; almost none of them after-all lived more than forty miles from it. Of the city-states, most were tiny containing no more than 20,000 souls; the biggest might have had 300,000. Foremost among them were: Argos, Athens, Corinth, Delphi, Elis, Rhodes, Sparta and Thebes. Athens and Corinth become the dominant maritime and mercantile powers. Sparta developed a militaristic slave society of a kind which has made it one of the famous oddities of world history. During the 8th-century BC, a growth of population brought greater pressure on available land; minerals too were rare, there was no tin, copper or iron. This ultimately led to a great age of Greek colonisation. By the end of it, in the 6th century BC, the Greek world stretched far beyond the Aegean; Byzantium (modern day Istanbul); along the Ionian coast of Anatolia (modern Turkey); Syracuse in Sicily; Magna Graecia in southern Italy; Marseilles in France; and as far as the fertile shores of Libya and the Black Sea. Rivalry with a large and aggressive neighbour in the interior of Anatolia, Lydia, gave added impetuous to Greek restlessness; the last king of Lydia, Croesus (d. 547 BC), has survived in popular memory as a man of legendary wealth. Nor were colonisation and trade the only agents diffusing Greek ways. The historical records of foreign kings show us that there was a supply of Greek mercenaries available from the 6th century onwards. When the Persians took Egypt in 525 BC, Greeks fought on each side. The ability to act as a disciplined unit would be the heart of three centuries of Greek military success. The famous Greek Phalanx consisted of a solid block of heavily-armed infantry, usually eight ranks deep but often more. His main weapon was the spear, which was not thrown, but thrust and stabbed by the first three ranks in the mêlée which followed a charge, while the back ranks inexorably pushed them forward. Each man relied for protection on the shield of his neighbour, therefore to keep an ordered line was crucial.The Spartans were particularly admired for their expertise and cohesion once the scrimmage had begun. The Phalanx would undergo a few tactical developments. Philip of Macedon made the spears twice as long, enabling the first five ranks to fight and presenting a much denser array of weapons for the charge. Philip's other innovation was greater coordination with an effective cavalry. But the next major advance in military tactics must wait for the Roman legions. Greek Political Innovation Ancient Greek civilisation showed greater powers of evolution than any of its predecessors. From the 7th-century BC, Greece passed through a dramatic stage of political upheaval; it remains unclear exactly how this change came about. Initially, all the city-states seem to have been petty kingdom, but gradually monarchy gave way to the rule of an aristocratic oligarchy in most city-states. Inevitably, the domination of politics and aggregation of wealth by small groups of families was apt to cause social unrest, and in many cities a tyrant would at some point seize power for himself. In Athens for example, a popular general, Peisistratus (d. 527 BC), emerged as something of a benevolent dictator in 541 BC. He ushered-in an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity for the city, instituting Athenian naval supremacy in the Aegean Sea. Peisistratus’ son proved to be a much less adept ruler and was toppled by the Athenian aristocrats in 510 BC, eager to get power back into their own hands. But this only hastened their own demise. A popular politician named Cleisthenes (d. 508 BC) took charge in 508 BC, and established a radical solution. All political decisions were taken in principle by majority vote of an assembly of all citizens regardless of wealth. Citizenship, of course, was restricted to a small proportion of the people in the city-states; women could not be citizens, and nor could slaves, who made up perhaps 25% of the population of Greece. This form of democracy gradually spread to numerous other city-states. As so often in other matters, Sparta was a notable exception, ruled through the whole period by a system of two hereditary monarchs. Citizens of all the Greek city-states took a passionate interest in the affairs of their city, and violently arguing the merits of the two rival forms of Greek government. Sparta and Athens became inexorably associated with aristocratic oligarchy and democracy respectively. Any city-state scheming to replace an oligarchy would appeal to Athens for help, and similarly those opposed to democracy would look to Sparta. Yet herein lies one of the secrets of Greek achievement. It could draw upon a rich variety of political experience, providing data for the first systematic reflections upon the great problems of law, duty and obligation. Rise of Persia Following the Late Bronze Age Collapse from 1200 BC, the Near East was for a long time a chaos of migrating peoples and short-lived empires. The history of the Persian Empire begins with the settlement of Aryan peoples from the north on the high plateau of Iran; the word in its oldest form means "land of the Aryans". Of these peoples, it was first the Medes who played the dominant role, moving northwest and then conquering Assyria in 612 BC. The Persians went south, and established themselves on the Persian Gulf, the heartland of Ancient Persia. The balance between the Medes and the Persians rapidly changed when Cyrus the Great (559-530 BC) became the first king of a united Persia. He rebels against the Medes in 553, and three years later captured their king and their capital, Ecbatana. Thenceforth the boundaries of conquest rolled westward, swallowing Greece's rival Lydia in 547 BC, and advancing through Anatolia to the sea, including the Greek cities of the Ionian coast. Babylon fell to him next in 539 BC, bringing Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine into his empire. Only in the east, did Cyrus find it difficult to stabilise his frontiers; he died there fighting the Scythians. Cyrus’s son added Egypt in 525 BC. The Persian army behind these conquests famously included an elite corp of heavy infantry known by a brilliant piece of propaganda as the immortals, for the simple reason that there were always 10,000; in theory as soon as one died, another soldier was ready to take his place. The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BC), named after a legendary ancestor of Cyrus, was the largest empire the world had seen until that time, and had been established within a mere twenty-five years. Although there would be setbacks aplenty, a Persian Empire would provided a framework for the Near East for 1200 years, until the rise of Islam in the 7th-century AD. For all the great enmity between Greece and Persia, the Persians were in fact quite enlightened ruler. Cyrus saw himself with some justification as a liberator, and many people succumbed to this conqueror because they believed it in their interest to do so. He was careful to respect the institutions and ways of his diverse subjects. Government was based upon provincial governors, a royal prince or great nobleman, and required from subjects little beyond tribute and obedience. Large areas knew longer periods of peace under it than they had for centuries. The Persians were themselves Zoroastrian, a monotheistic faith centered on animal sacrifice in fire and a dualistic cosmology of good and evil; the Christian tradition of the hellfire probably came from Zoroaster. Yet they were remarkably tolerant of other religions, making a point of respecting the Babylonian religion, and allowing the Jewish people to return from enslavement in Babylon to Jerusalem, where Cyrus launched the rebuilding of the Temple Mount; replacing Solomon's Temple which had been destroyed by the Babylonians. The practice of slavery was also far less widespread in Persia than in other contemporaries, including Ancient Greece. During the long rule of Darius I (522-486 BC), the Persian Empire reached its greatest extent; conquering Thrace and Macedonia in the west, to north-western India in the east. Inside the empire a remarkable work of consolidation was undertaken. A great new capital was established at Persepolis, as well as a royal bureaucracy, conducting its work in Aramaic, the old lingua franca of the Assyrian Empire, using the Phoenician alphabet. Much of the provincial tributes were invested in road-building, and at their best these roads could convey messages at 200 miles a day. Thus Persia pulled peoples into a common experience; Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, Jews, Phoenicians, Greeks, Egyptians, Indians were for the first time all governed by one empire. Thus Greek civilisation was now confronted with her defining challenge; the Greco-Persian Wars. Greco-Persian Wars The Greco-Persian Wars (499-479 BC) is the climax of the early history of Greece and the inauguration of its ''Golden Age''. It was sparked when the Greek-speaking cities of Ionia revolted against Persian rule in 499 BC, supported to a limited extent by Athens and Eretria. The revolt failed in the end and left the mainland cities facing an enraged opponent. In 490 BC, Darius I (d. 486) sent a Persian fleet to make punitive attacks on the Greeks who had dared to challenge Persian authority. After the siege and sack of the small city of Eretria, the Persian army landed on the plain of Marathon to the north of Athens. In Athens, the decision was taken to meet them in the field. Famously, a messenger named Pheidippides ran 150 miles in two days to seek help from the Spartans, but a religious festival prevents them from setting-off for six days. Unfortunately very few reliable details of the Battle of Marathon (September 490 BC) are known. The historian Herodotus (d. 425 BC) described it in only a short passage, and his claim of the casualties, 192 Athenian dead to 6400 Persians, is rather hard to take seriously. We do know that the Athenians and a few allies won a decisive victory, and the Persian survivors were rescued from the beaches by their fleet, which soon withdrew. Two days after the event, 2000 Spartans arrived and visited the battlefield as admiring tourists of the Persian dead. No one doubted that the Persians would return, but a subsequent revolt in Egypt and the death of Darius in 486 BC extended the lull before the storm. In the interval, a rich new vein of silver was discovered near Athens, and the statesman Themistocles (494-459 BC) persuaded his fellow citizens to apply the windfall to building a great fleet that made her the preponderant Greek power at sea. Then ten years after Marathon in 480 BC, the Persians under Xerxes I (486-65 BC) came again, this time with a full-scale invasion force. The size of the Persian army has been the subject of endless dispute, because the numbers given in ancient sources are wildly improbable. Modern estimates suggest there were most likely less than 100,000 men, but this was still an overwhelming enough force. It was led by the Persian king himself, with a great naval fleet following the coastline to reprovision the army. But such a juggernaut moved slowly, and there was time to prepare. Marathon had convinced the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten, and a coalition of 31 city-states, including Athens and Sparta, determined to resist the invaders. An army was sent north to delay the Persian, led by Leonidas, one of the two kings of Sparta. This force consisting of 300 Spartans and some 6,700 other Greeks fought the legendary Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC) in a narrow mountain pass on the eastern coast of central Greece. On two successive days, Leonidas’ small force held-off the vast army, with heavy Persian casualties. The impasse was ultimately broken by the treachery of a Greek peasant called Ephialtes, who led the Persians along goat-paths behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, aware he was being outflanked, dismissed the bulk of his army and remained to guard their retreat with his 300 Spartans and some 1100 Thespians and Thebans, selling their lives at a high price; an enduring monument to Spartan discipline and valour, captured in a famous epitaph: “''Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here, obedient to their laws.” By the time the Persians reached Athens, the city had been evacuated and Xerxes ordered it reduced to rubble. He then turned to dealing with the Greek fleet. The Persians wanted to fight in the open seas, but the Greeks retreated into the narrow strait of Salamis. After three weeks of stalemate, Xerxes lost patience and sent in his ships. At the naval '''Battle of Salamis '(480 BC), the Persians threw-away their numerical advantage and the greater maneuverability of their ships. In the cramped conditions, numbers became an active hindrance, and the heavier Greek triremes rammed and sank their opponents in great numbers as the panic spreads; the Greek victory was overwhelming. With winter closing in and having lost the ability to reprovision his army, Xerxes began the long retreat back toward Persian territory. The following spring, the allies assembled the largest Greek army yet assembled, under Spartan general Pausanias (470 BC), and marched north to confront the Persians. The Battle of Plataea (August 479 BC) was a cautious affair over 11 days, with the Greeks remaining in the hills and refusing to be drawn into the prime cavalry terrain around the Persian camp. Eventually, with their supply-lines overstretched, the Greeks decided to withdraw. The Persians decided to attack the retreating Greeks, but they halted and gave battle, routing the lightly armed Persian infantry. That same month, the remaining Persian fleet were persued across the Aegean and ambushed at the Battle of Mycale (August 479 BC) near the Ionian coast. The Persians beached their ships but were routed, and their fleet captured and burned. This ended the Persian invasion and they would not return this time. Greek Golden Age Victory over the Persians ushered in the greatest age of Greek history. Some have spoken of a "Greek miracle", so high do the achievements of classical civilization appear. This is why the century or so of this small region’s history is worth as much attention as the millennial empires of antiquity. Greek civilization was rooted on a relatively simple economy. The typical community depended on production by small farmers of grain, olives, vines and timber for the home market. Foreign trade and trade between cities was vigorous, but the scale was quite small. At the height of the craze for the best Athenian pottery it has been suggested that no more than 150 craftsmen were at work making and painting it. One element in society, which has drawn undue attention, was a tolerated and even romanticised male homosexuality. it was acceptable for young males to have love-affairs with older men, and this was not thought to disqualify them for subsequent heterosexual marriage. At root, it may only have been a function of the restrictive social assumptions that governed all women; even upper-class women stayed in seclusion most of the time. Athens dominates our picture of Ancient Greece. What we know most about we often tend to think most important, but it was untypical in important ways; both big and a commercial centre. Nevertheless, her cultural primacy was recognized at the time. During the Athenian Golden Age (478-431) under the statesman and orator Pericles (d. 429 BC), her undisputed naval preeminence in the eastern Mediterranean gave her great commercial power. Thanks to this and the silver mine of Laurium, she was the richest of the Greek cities. Thus were built the buildings whose ruins still crown the Acropolis, the Parthenon and Propylaea, some of the most astonishing buildings of the ancient world. Pericles brought Athenian democracy to its greatest height. The powers of the remaining elected officers were steadily reduced to the lawcourts, and these offices were increasingly held by men from outside the traditional ruling class. Thus the assembly of all adult male citizens became the primary body in the daily running of the city. Citizens were encouraged to dedicate themselves to public service by the introduction of a small salary for participation. The old political families seem to have accepted the democratic system, because men still thought their birth made it proper for them to take the lead in affairs; Themistocles, the builder of the Athenian fleet of Salamis, and Pericles were both from old families. Athenian democracy has been both idealised and criticised ever since. Doubtless her politics was full of vanities and misjudgements, such as exiling Themistocles and the historian Thucydides, and the stigma of the execution of Socrates. In the end, it nevertheless left to posterity the myth, and sometimes reality, of the greatest instrument of political education contrived down to that time. Some of the most important figures of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this Golden Age: the dramatists Aeschylus (d. 456 BC), Sophocles (d. 405 BC), Euripides (d. 406 BC), and Aristophanes (d. 386 BC); the physician Hippocrates (d. 460 BC); the philosophers Socrates (d. 399 BC) and Plato (d. 347 BC), the historians Herodotus (d. 425 BC) and Thucydides (d. 400 BC), the poet Simonides (d. 468 BC), and the sculptor Phidias (d. 430 BC). But Greece was not just Athens, and the Greek revolution in human thought is a whole, the product of scores of cities all over the Hellenic world. Greek Division and Decline Yet those achievements had as their background a political history so poisonous that it ended in the extinction of the institution which sheltered Greek civilization; the city-state. For thirty years after Plataea and Mycale, the war with Persia dragged on. With survival assured, the Spartans had gone home, content to return to their former policy of isolationism. This left Athens undisputed leader of those city-states that wanted to press on with liberating those Greek cities still under the Persians. A confederation called the Delian League was formed with a common fleet and army, and command of it was given to an Athenian. The League achieved several significant victories; throughout the 470s BC, they drove the Persians out of Thrace and the Aegean islands, and in the next decade, campaigns in Anatolia strengthened the Greek position there. As time passed, the members contributed not ships but money. Some did not wish to pay up as the Persian danger declined, but Athenian intervention to make sure that they did not default grew steadily harsher. Naxos, for example, which tried to leave the League, was besieged back into it. The Delian League was turning gradually into an Athenian Empire. When peace was made with Persia in 449 BC, the it continued, though its reason for being had gone. Meanwhile, tension with the other city-states steadily grew, especially with their old rival the Spartans. Sparta had increasing difficulty in retaining the loyalty of the members of her own Peloponnesian League. Her irritation soon came to have an ideological flavour too, for Athens meddled in the internal politics of other city-states, the result of which was usually imitation of Athenian democracy. Meanwhile, Corinth, another big trading city, felt herself directly threatened by Athens, which was inciting rebellion in her colonies and cut her out of established trae-routes. The materials thus accumulated for a coalition against Athens, in which Sparta eventually took the lead. There was 15-years of not very determined warfare against Athens between 460-445 BC, and then a doubtful peace. It was in 431 BC that the great struggle began that would ultimately end in the mutual destruction of both Athens and Sparta; the Peloponnesian War '''(431-404 BC). The underlying pattern of the war was a dispiriting routine based on two unchangeable facts; that the Athenians could not match their enemies on land, and that her navy and great city-walls made her virtually impregnable. Every summer, the Spartans marched north and spent a month destroying the Athenian crops, while the farmers sheltered in the city, untroubled by siege which was beyond the capacity of Classical Greek armies. The Athenian fleet, still controlling the sea, would assure that the people were fed by imported corn, and could meanwhile land an army anywhere in the Aegean. Yet the Athenian strategy did not work as well as this. Plague struck the overcrowded city in 429 BC, killing an estimated 25% of the population and robbing it of the leadership of Pericles. Sparta even sued for peace in 425 BC, after suffering defeats at Pylos and Sphakteria, but the Athenians arrogantly rejected the proposal. Ten years of strategical deadlock did bring peace for a time in 421 BC, but not a lasting one. The case of Melos shows the war in all its brutal light. This tiny island city-state offended Athens by trying to remain neutral, so in 416 BC the Athenians besieged the city into submission, slaughtered the men, and enslaved the women and children. The turning point in the war came in 415. Athenian frustrations found an outlet in a scheme to carry the war further afield. In Sicily lay the rich city of Syracuse, the most important colony of Corinth, Athens’ greatest commercial rivals. Capturing Syracuse would both decisively wound her enemy, and provide the wealth to build an even bigger fleet. The result was the disastrous Sicilian Expedition (415–413 BC), which was plague by incompetent leadership. It was decisive, but as a death-blow to the ambitions of Athens; 10,000 soldiers, 30,000 sailors, and 200 ships were lost, a large portion of Athen's total manpower. Then in 414, the Spartans sought and obtained an alliance with Achaemenid Persia, with a secret clause allowing the Persian king to regain control over the Greek cities of Ionia, towards which Sparta felt no obligations. The Persians provided the funds for the establishment of a Spartan navy, depriving Athens of her naval supremacy. The end came suddenly, when the Athenian fleet was surprised and defeated at the Battle of Aegospotami (405 BC) near the Hellespont. This effectively ended the war. Athens capitulated after a year of naval blockade and starvation. Spartan terms were remarkably lenient by the standards of the day; no one was killed or enslaved, no temples were destroyed. Yet Athens was stripped of her overseas colonies, and the great city-walls protecting the city and her port were systematically demolished. The humiliation of defeat would show the harsh reality of Athenian democracy. The renowned philosopher Socrates (399 BC) had long been the most vocal critic of the Athenian political elites. He was arrested and put on trial on the dubious charge of corrupting the youth of the city. Plato wrote an account of his spirited defense at the trial, but it was not one likely (and no doubt intended) to garner any sympathy. Socrates was found guilty and executed by self-administered poison. After the Peloponnesian War, there followed a brief Spartan hegemony, but her deeply conservative social structure made her ill-equipped to provide the necessary leadership. The Greeks attempted to prevent the Persians cashing the promissory note on the cities of Ionia, but this had to be conceded after a war which brought something of a revival of Athenian naval power. In the end, Sparta and Persia had a common interest in preventing a renaissance of Athens and made peace in 387 BC. Ironically, the Spartans soon became as hated as the Athenians had been, with the ambitious newcomer Thebes taking the leadership of their enemies. Under the brilliant general and statesman Epaminondas (d. 362 BC), to the astonishment of all Greece, the Spartan army was defeated at the Battle of Leuctra (July 371). Spartan influence collapsed and Thebes filled the vacuum. But in a surprise about-turn, Athens now allied itself with Sparta against Thebes. Although the Battle of Mantinea (July 362 BC) was a Theban victory, she lost much of her manpower and the leadership of Epaminondas; Theban power soon crumbled. In fact such were the losses at Mantinea for all the great city-states, that it effectively put an end to the idea of one city-state establishing hegemony over Greece. For decades Greece had been torn by lethal squabbles as cities change sides, betray treaties, and attack each other by surprise. The Greek invention of politics seems like a poison brew. After the mid-4th-century BC, the history of Greece civilization would be shaped, paradoxically, by a kingdom in northern Greece which some said was not Greek at all: Macedon. The glorious days of the city-state had passed, but in the end the Greeks are remembered as poets and philosophers. It is an achievement of the mind that constitutes their major claim on our attention. Some of their greatest advances were not to be made until long after the so-called Greek Golden Age. Aristotle (d. 322 BC) was so rich a thinker and interested in so many sides of experience that his historical influence is hard to delimit. What he wrote provided a framework for the discussion of biology, physics, mathematics, logic, literary criticism, aesthetics, psychology, ethics and politics for 2300 years. Euclid (d. 285 BC) was the greatest systematiser of geometry, defining it until the 19th century. Archimedes (d. 212 BC), who was probably Euclid’s pupil, is most famous for his practical achievements in the construction of war-machines in Sicily, as well as inventing the windlass, an apparatus for moving heavy weights. Eratosthenes (d. 194 BC) was the first man to measure the size of the earth. Hero of Alexandria (d. 70 AD) is said to have invented a steam engine and certainly used steam to transmit energy. Aristarchus of Samos (d. 230 BC) got so far as to say that the earth moved around the sun, though his views were set aside by contemporaries and posterity. Epicurus (d. 270 BC) founded a highly influential school of philosophy. Zeno of Citium (d. 262 BC) popularised an even more influential doctrine, Stoicism. Essentially the Stoics taught that man could not control what happened to him, but he could accept what was sent by fate; its ethic of disciplined common sense was to have great success at Rome. Meanwhile, the final elaborations of Greek astronomy were not achieved until work in the 2nd-century AD by a famous Alexandrian, Ptolemy (d. 170 AD). Ptolemy’s predictions of planetary movement would still serve as adequate guides for oceanic navigation in the age of Columbus, even if they rested on misconceptions. Even erroneous Greek ideas would shape Western thought for centuries. The intellectual achievements of the Greek world often pushed up to the limits of existing technical skills; they could not be expected to go beyond them. Within a few centuries, Greek civilization had invented philosophy, politics, most of arithmetic and geometry, and the categories of Western art and science. It was quite simply the most important extension of humanity’s grasp of its destiny down to that time. And the ideas of these Greek thinkers and artists be preserved, imitated and spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, and as far as India thanks to the conquering exploits of Alexander the Great. Classical Greece also had a powerful influence on the Romans, through whom their ideas would pass eventually to medieval Europe. Emergence of the Roman Republic Even in the 4th-century BC, the Ancient Greeks were almost oblivious to the new rising star in the west, '''Rome. The early years of Rome are shadowed in mystery, because most of the records were destroyed when the city was sacked in 390 BC. All we have are the stories the Romans told themselves. According to the founding myth, the city that became Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus, on the site where he and his brother, Remus, had been suckled by a she-wolf as orphan infants. We need not take this seriously, but it is a good symbol of early Rome’s debt to the past; a debt to the Ancient Greeks for the twins were supposedly descendants of a refugee Trojan prince, and a debt to the neighbouring Etruscan civilisation, among whose cults has been traced a special reverence for the wolf. The site of Rome was an obvious place for a prosperous settlement. Fifteen miles upstream on the River Tiber, there were several steep hills providing natural defences. It was high enough up the river to be bridged, but not so high that it could not be reached by sea-going vessels. The Tiber was also a natural barrier across the land route which ran up and down the west coast of Italy, between the two most prosperous early regions; the Etruscans to the north, and the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia in the far south. Italy was then a confusion of peoples, with Rome the northernmost settlement of the tribal Latin people, bordering the more developed Etruscans. The Etruscans remains a mysterious people, but somehow they developed an advanced culture heavily influenced by Ancient Greek culture; Herodotus claimed that they were migrants from Lydia, neighbours of the Greek colonies on the Ionian coast. The Etruscans were probably organised as a loose federation of city-states, were literate, using an alphabet derived from Greek, and were relatively rich through trade with the Celtic world to the north and the Greeks to the south. They also brought metallurgy to a high level, vigorously exploiting the iron deposits of Elba Island off the coast. With iron weapons, they established hegemony over all of northern Italy, from the Po Valley down to Tiber, with an ill-defined authority as far south as Campania. According to traditional accounts, Romulus killed his brother in a quarrel, and thus became the first of seven kings of the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), over a span of 250 years. There were almost certainly more that seven kings; the idea that seven successive rulers could reign for an average of 35 years stretches credulity. The later Romans wished to have explanations for the early evolution of their culture, and ascribed various innovations to each of these kings, often in stereotypical ways. Romulus is credited with making Rome a society ruled by laws, with the establishment of the Senate as an advisory council of nobles, and citizens assemblies of commoners. Romulus was also behind one of the most notorious incidents in Roman history, commonly known as the rape of the Sabine women; the mass abduction of young women from the neighbouring tribe. The women intervened themselves in the battle that followed, leading to the joining of the two tribes, and the initial growth of the city. From these unsavoury beginnings resulted 1000 years of Roman civilisation. The second king, Numa, is credited with the founding of the most important religious institutions in Rome: the Etruscan-influenced pantheon of gods and goddesses; the practice of predicting omens through auguries, examining the entrails of sacrificed animals; the office of Pontifex Maximus or high priest; the Vestal Virgins; the calendar of regular and holy days; and the temple of Janus, whose doors were closed to indicate a state of peace. His reign was marked by peace, transforming the Romans into a literate society of settled farmers. By contrast his successor, Tullus, made war on Rome's underdeveloped Latin neighbours, coming to dominate the 50-mile region to the south of Rome. He is also credited with turning the Roman army into a well-equipped and well-disciplined force. The third king, Ancus, was something of an amalgam of his predecessors; by nature a peaceful and religious king, who was dragged into war by fate. He is credited with establishing the rituals surrounding how Rome would declare war on an enemy, and with founding the port of Ostia and the beginning of a Roman navy. These kings are instructive, and offer a neat encapsulation of the Roman character; a warlike people tempered by religion. After Ancus, the Roman throne was usurped by Tarquin the Elder, a nobleman of Etruscan birth. Yet he proved an able king, both as an administrator and military commander. He is remembered for inaugurating one of the most famous Roman traditions, the Triumph. He also built the Circus Maximus hippodrome, one of the greatest sports venues in the ancient world, where the people of Rome flocked to see gladiators and wild beasts in combat. Tarquin was by all accounts the last good king of Rome. He was successes by his son, who was was assassinated and usurped by his brother and last king, the tyrannical Tarquin the Proud. Roman legend provides a dramatic story to account for the rebellion that resulted in the overthrow of the Roman monarchy. Tarquin's son raped a Roman noblewoman of exceptional virtue, Lucretia. She made the crime public and then, overcome with shame, committed suicide. This outrage provoked the popular uprising, led by Lucius Junius Brutus, that expelled the Tarquins from the city. From that point on, the Roman people swore an oath never to again suffer a king to rule Rome. Another story tells how Brutus condemned to death his own two sons for conspiring to restore the Tarquins, firmly implanting the virtue of putting the interests of the republic above even family. According to tradition the founding of the Roman Republic (509 BC–27 BC) occurred in 509 BC, although the date is highly suspect. While probably not far from the truth, later Roman historians most likely orchestrated it to pre-date the establishment of Athenian Democracy in 507 BC. In the Roman Republic sovereignty ultimately rested, at least in theory, with the people, concisely expressed through the motto SPQR or "the Roman Senate and People". When it was founded the population of the city was around 130,000, and divided into two basic groups: the Patricians, the nobles who could trace their families back to the Senators chosen by Romulus; and the Plebeians or Plebs, the commoners who could not. The people acted through a complicated set of assemblies attended by all citizens, similar to what went on in many Greek city-states. But the actual working of the Republic was not as democratic as they appeared on the surface. Real power in practice rested in the Roman Senate, already in existence as an advisory body to the kings. It consisted of some 300 members, dominated by Patricians, whose appointment was for life unless impeached; until 318 BC, the Senate was an unelected body, with new members appointed by the existing senators. The Senate now chose two officials from among its own number to become joint heads of state. The two Consuls were elected only for one year, and each had a veto on the actions of the other, thus ensuring that power could never be concentrated in just one man. They were bound to be men of experience and weight, since they had to have passed through at least two subordinate levels of office, Quaestors and Praetors, before becoming eligible; Rome was rarely short of able men. High offices were won in the public assemblies, so Senators had to cultivate support among the citizenship. Yet the system was not as democratic as it might appear. Elections gave greater power to the wealthier social classes; Senatorial, Equestrian, and generally five ranks of Plebs. The Roman constitution also provided for a more powerful office than the Consuls in a crisis, with the title of Dictator; a single overall leader with absolute power for a period of no more than six months. Perhaps the most famous holder of the office was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (d.  430 BC) who relinquished his near-absolute power twice to returned to his farm, and passed into the collective memory as a paradigm of service to the greater good. Dictators would be appointed of and on over the next 450 years when emergencies arose, but it was not until Julius Caesar that a Dictator did not ultimately resign of his own free will. That the Roman constitution worked well for a long time is indisputable, but the system was perfectly designed for a small oligarchy of rich Patrician families to rule and dispute the right to office among themselves. The Plebs initially had precious little say in political affairs, but the disenfranchised majority slowly wrested concessions in the two centuries that followed the founding of the Republic. This process began dramatically with the first recorded strike in history, known as the Succession of the Plebs of 494 BC; the Plebs simply abandoned the city en masse to the nearby Sacred Mountain and threatened to establish a new city unless their demands were met. The Patrician senators give in to pressure from the plebs, with good reason for these were the backbone of Rome's economy and army. The result was the first written codification of Roman law known as the Twelve Tables, and the creation of a powerful new office, the Tribunes of the Plebs. Tribunes had the power to initiate or veto legislation, thus safeguarding Plebeian rights. Eventually all elected offices were opened to the Plebs, and since such offices came with membership of the Senate, the assembly was transformed into a truly representative body. In 367 BC there was the first Plebeian Consul, in 361 BC the first Plebeian Censor (a crucial role in elections), and from 342 BC one of the two Consuls each year had to be from the Plebs. In 339 BC, there was the first Dictator from the Plebs. Almost all distinctions between Patricians and Plebeians had disappeared by 287 BC. Social tensions would nevertheless dominate Roman politics for the duration of the Republic. There emerged a wealthy Plebeian class, closer to the Patricians than to the people, and wealth simply replaced noble-blood as the dominant force in Roman politics. Meanwhile, beneath the Plebs were the landless poor and freed slaves who steadily grew in numbers, but remained disenfranchised. While the 5th-century BC was a Golden Age for Ancient Greeks, these years were long and hard for the infant Roman Republic, as it grew to adolescence. The population of the city was growing and there was not enough land to give them, and not enough grain to feed them; periodic famines and plagues were common. Throughout these struggles, the Romans were held together by an unceasing series of defensive wars against their neighbours; to the north, the Etruscan city-states; to the south the subjugated Latin settlements chaffing under Roman dominance; further south Campania and beyond that Naples; and to the east were numerous semi-nomadic hill-tribes. Crucial to Rome's survival was her military. All citizens were liable for short-term conscription to the Roman legions, with the infantry ranks filled by the lower classes, while the cavalry was left to the wealthy Patricians who could afford horses. The commanding position was generally given to one of the Consuls. The army was organised similarly to the Greek Phalanx, until more distinctive Roman tactics emerged during the Samnite War. These hard years highlight the characteristic Roman obstinance that would win them an empire; their unwillingness to quit in the face of adversity sometimes bordered on the edge of insanity. The greatest threat to Rome was the city of Veii, a mere 12 miles to the north and the southern-most Etruscan city-state. Veii controlled the northern bank of the River Tiber, and when the pair were not clashing directly, the Etruscans bankrolled Rome's enemies. Only in 402 BC, did Rome feel secure enough to challenge their northern rival openly. By this stage, Etruscan power was in steady general decline: pressured from the north by Celts from Gaul (modern-day France) migrating into the Po River valley; and cut-off from allies by the ascendancy of Syracuse as the dominant power in that part of the Mediterranean, after their defeat of the Athenian invasion of 415 BC. The traditional length of the war with Veii is ten years, but most historians agree that this was lifted from the Trojan Wars; more likely it was about six years. Battles were intermittent and inconclusive, and instead the Romans decided to besiege Veii itself. This forced them for the first time to keep an army in the field all year round, and to introduce soldier pay; the first step to a fully professional army. Veii fell in the end in 396 BC, and its sack marked be slow beginning for the end of Etruscan dominance in northern Italy, squeezed between the Gallic migration and Roman expansion. Things were looking good for the Romans, but fate was about to deal them a cruel blow. A tribe of Gauls, led by a strong warrior chieftain called Brennus, made a raid south through Italy in search of booty. To meet this threat, the Romans assembled one of the largest armies yet raised, but suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Allied River (390 BC). The Gauls then pursued the fleeing Romans back to Rome itself, and sacked the city, while the population either fled or huddled on the fortified Capital Hill. The barbarians were eventually bribed to withdrew back north, but the sack of Rome would be one of the most traumatising events in Roman history, and leave them in fearful dread of the Gauls, until Julius Caesar finally exorcised their demon in 50 BC. Though much of the city had been burned, Rome recovered astonishingly quickly from their humiliation thanks to the gifted leadership of Marcus Furius Camillus (d. 365 BC); he was later honoured with the title, the Second Founder of Rome. Within a generation, they were ready to renew their gradual expansion over central Italy. It would be another 850 years before Rome was sacked again. Category:Historical Periods